CEO Preservation Society

June 17, 2006

CEO Preservation Society

This week I was talking to a friend of mine, Rob Duboff. Rob is CEO and founder of HawkPartners, a marketing and communications strategy company. He is very knowledgeable about leadership trends and offhandedly mentioned that what the world needed today was a CEO Preservation Society. I could not agree more.

With CEOs exiting their jobs at an increasingly rapid rate (approximately two to three per day), we need to figure out how to keep CEOs longer and make the job appealing to the next generation. We also need a way to preserve their good counsel. After having been CEOs, they should be in great demand for advising newcomer CEOs on what works and doesn’t work. In my opinion, it should not matter why they exited their jobs as much as what they can impart to rising stars.

Years ago when I was at Fortune, the magazine had an annual feature titled the Business Hall of Fame. CEOs would be honored at a yearly event and featured proudly in the magazine. One wonders if a similar venture could ever work today. Most CEOs fall off their pedestal for one reason or another and the politics surrounding such membership would doom an event from the start.

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Leslie Gaines-Ross

lesliegainesross@gmail.com

As Weber Shandwick’s Chief Reputation Strategist, I focus on the ever changing world of reputation. For the past 25 years, I have relentlessly observed, researched and commented on the rise and fall of reputations.